Beneath The Surface
by hollietta
Summary: Everyone has their own opinion about Holly Talon. Rebel, wild heart, scum, murderer, criminal, heroine, saviour. The story of the notorious hunter-leader-politician of the Clone Wars era, through the eyes of her associates.
1. The Legend - Satine

Holly Aayla Maria Talon. If you haven't heard the name, you don't know how lucky you are, you're much better off not knowing about people like her. She's got a bad reputation, let me tell you. Its not like it her fault though. I'm pretty sure I'd be like her if I'd been through what she's been through. Say what you will about Holly's background and distinctly criminal instincts, but always remember all the good things she's done. So some of her policies are a little... radical and biased,  
but that's her past talking through her, but TAFP was the bravest, most selfless thing any of us have done... give her some credit.

No one believed in her. No one ever had. But she made it. She was one of a kind, a great friend, and the one person you really didn't want to get on the wrong side of. There was no one in the galaxy more dangerous when angry than her. One thing everyone noticed about Holly was that she never tried to hide her background, or where she'd made her money. She didn't fit the same mold as anyone anywhere. She was stunningly beautiful and she knew it, played it to her advantage at every chance she got.

It was her background that was the most talked about thing though. She blasted her way to the top, she had to fight for everything she achieved. She was an orphan, you see. She was barely six months old when her mother and father were killed by the Death Watch. She was raised by her many older sibling, most notably her brothers,  
Dazz and Jett. They hardly had the easiest life. I don't know the details though, Holly and I are close friends, but its not something she wants to tell anyone. One of her sisters married the Prince of Felucia, but the new lifestyle she was forced into didn't suit Holly, and she soon escaped, becoming the hunter and warrior she was trained to be. She was Mandalorian. She was a desendent of the notorious Champion of The Great Hunt, Holly Cadera-Talon, possibly the best known warrior of her time, and arguably the most infamous of the nine Talon sisters from that era. She's proud of that heritage, I know, but I also know that she's ashamed. She doesn't see herself as the great leader, the supreme warrior or even the shrewd politician that her entire family is known for. She never saw herself that way. But she is. Or rather, she was. Now she's just a shadow of her former self, her blonde hair has greyed, her blue eyes lost their sparkle, her skin wrinkled, she's become antisocial,  
she's lost most of her teeth, she can't walk, can't look after herself and these days, her hearing is fading too... she's lost everything. It wasn't even her fault.  
Now she's a woman with a broken life, training her daughters to be the leaders, warriors and politicians she could never be.

She was a legend... now she's a nobody. History will remember her, for setting up the alliance, but forget everything else she did. Well, we all have our stories to tell about Holly. And we'll all tell you. Telling everyone the truth is the least we can do for the wild-spirited saviour of our galaxy. 


	2. Sisters - Talanna

She wasn't like anyone else. There was no one in the galaxy that could ever compare to my sister, and I doubt there ever will be. We were competitive, and we spent a high percentage of our careers working on the same jobs, but at the same time trying to remove the threat the other one posed to our position. She was a million times the warrior I ever was. For a start, she was much more determined. The time I remember most vividly, I had second thoughts about the job and I tried to stop her.  
She was stronger than me, she managed to force me away and take the short, perfectly accurate, clean and deadly all in one move. Typical. She always was more skilled than me. But then, I was more interested in politics than blowing people up. When she began her political 'career', no one was more surprised than I was. She was a warrior, a leader, but she could talk too. I told her once that the higher up you are, the further you have to fall. She'd been a little too confident for anyone's liking that day, she'd come up with a plan. It was a good plan to be honest, but it wasn't the foolproof plan she claimed it was. I knew she was just trying to convince the council, but even they had brains. I'd pointed out that they would easily see what could go wrong in her plan, naturally she'd fixed me with a glare that could easily have frozen time and told me if I wasn't going to be positive, I may find myself taking an unexpected and accidental flying lesson out of the the window on the twelfth floor. Sisters are such charming creatures.

I know what happens if you betrayed her too. I've been there. I betrayed her once. I was one of the lucky ones. Ones of the traitors she didn't kill.

She was a legend, my little sister, in more ways than one. It wasn't just the legend of her power and deeds that stunned the galaxy. It was more than that. Our family has a proud tradition, and with such proud traditions, comes superstition, stories and legends. A very long time ago, there were nine Talon sisters. They were infamous. Each of them infamous for something. There was the warrior. There was the leader. The politician. The spirit of the light. The wild-hearted rebel. The manipulative dark-heart. The sneaky spy. The silent-but-deadly one. The spirit of pure evil. One of them, a Jedi, had a vision (or so the tale goes) that someday one woman would have the skill of all nine of them... that she would be a legend in her own right, bigger, brighter than the rest. Holly would never believe that she was this legend... but we could believe it. Everyone else saw it. We knew she was a legend. We knew she was the legend. 


	3. Mistake - Jasmine

AN: This chapter maybe a little more opinionated than the rest, as it is written from the POV of Jasmine Starhunter-Kryze, the bolshy Twi'lek-Mandalorian warrior who was a close friend of Holly's, and later her daughter-in-law. She's a TAFP member, but she isn't a constant member... sometimes she's there, sometimes she isn't. She takes jobs that her boss has strictly forbidden her from taking, yet still she returns... oh, and the manipulative, over-ambitious Togruta dark queen cloned her, and wiped the entire event from her memory... Jasmine is a character created purely for my messing about and creating crazy plotlines, hey, its not my fault I'm insane!  
Read, review, follow, favourite... thank you!  
~~Hol

CHAPTER THREE

"Always try to read the situation." That's what she told me. It was good advice, advice that saved my life more times than I'll ever admit, even here, even where I'm supposed to be telling the whole truth. Satine already told you about Holly's situation, didn't she? She already told you that Holly was in a bad accident when she was in her mind-forties, and lost her legs, and a good percentage of her teeth. She would tell you that, she's full of self-importance, that one. I'll bet she never told you what happened. Holly was attempting to stop an over-throw attempt inside The Alliance that day. She was determined. Nothing would stop her. Indeed, it wasn't a thing. It was a person. A feeling.

He was there. Her ex-husband. At that point, it had been mere weeks since he'd told her he wanted a divorce. If he'd been my partner, he wouldn't've been alive a minute after ditching me. She loved him, more than she ever loved anyone. And he let her down, ripped her to shreds, right when she needed him the most. Seeing him with that other woman must have been hard. It froze her for barely a minute. Then she strayed from the plan. Attacked him. Her words more vicious than any weapon. A lifetime of discrimination and hatred made her a heart of beskar and gave her a tongue sharper than any Vibro-blade. But it was twelve versus one. Warrior or not, she had no chance. She escaped every attempt to kill her, save for one. I remember it was Mesh'la Kryze that gave the order to her assistant. Thermal detonator. She didn't see it coming, while she was dealing with the others. When she did notice, it was a split second too late. She tried to dodge, tried to escape, but the blast still caught her. She flew. We found her, close to death, in a canyon.

She refused to let us replace her legs. "No more cybernetics." Thats what she said. The lower half of her left leg had been cybernetic before then anyway. The one real limb she had left was now her left arm - she'd lost her right arm years ago. She never recovered properly. I guess she didn't want to. I heard her telling her daughter Izzy, years later, when Izzy planned to re-form TAFP, never to have any dealings with Mesh'la Kryze. I remember the chilling finality of her words that day, "That was my last mistake." She was right. The worst part though? The absolute worst part? Mesh'la Kryze, the one who's fault this whole thing was, is my niece... I brought her up, mostly. I never thought that she could be capable of something like that. I knew she was more political than her twin Ka'rta, and that she agreed with her mother's pacifism, that she wanted to convert The Alliance to pacifism. I just never knew how far she would go to achieve that. 


End file.
